


Wasted Time

by bugheadjones



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 18:52:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugheadjones/pseuds/bugheadjones
Summary: Madison's future doesn't go quite as planned.





	Wasted Time

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2006.
> 
> I don't own these characters. I'm just playing with them.

It really didn't matter that he was her high school boyfriend. What mattered was that the original her was marrying him. There was also the tiny fact that her first husband ended up being a poor guy dressed in an expensive suit. She probably should have listened to her friends when they told her not to go to a hotel on Singles Weekend of all things. The marriage didn't last long, but it was the fact that she was stupid enough to buy into his act in an hour that she hated. If she had been in Neptune she wouldn't have been single. Or broke.   
  
Her parents stopped supporting her when she was twenty for dropping out of college. She was pretty and her parents had money. It would be amazing living in New York, possibly with a cute, rich, live-in boyfriend from time to time with no responsibilities. Wrong. When they found out they took all of her credit cards away and just flat out stopped sending her a check whenever she asked. It wasn't like she asked for a lot: a thousand dollars here, three thousand there. The rest she could get from a boy, or two.   
  
She tried to make ends meet, which was hard considering she refused to get a job, but, somehow, she was able to keep her apartment and eat and stay clothed. The real problem started when, of course, she just had to get a four thousand dollar dress for Shelly's wedding. She was determined to be the best dressed there. If she wasn't going to be getting married, she was going to look good single. And that was the beginning of her hotel hopping days. It wasn't that hard: meet a single, or married, guy at a bar, get _him_ drunk, take him to a hotel, get him to pay for a room for a few nights, and then get him back in the cab within ten minutes. It wasn't exactly a con artist thing, it was just a not so rich girl thing. She didn't feel dirty about it. Madison Sinclair had no idea what that word meant. Until her parents told her about the baby switch.   
  
She went back to Neptune for Christmas a year after dropping out, mainly to show her parents what they had done to her. They didn't notice a thing. She still looked the same and her parents noticed that right off. She had planned on telling them that she had been unable to get a job and had to move out of her apartment. Instead she ended up lying and telling them that she was fine and even made up a boyfriend, who was the heir to a cosmetic fortune. As soon as the words slipped past her lips she wished that she was bad at lying. As it was, she was great at it. It was really starting to bug her.   
  
After breakfast the next morning her parents sat her and her sister down and told her the real reason they had stopped supporting her. Not only did she learn that she was supposed to be poor (which she now was), she found out that _that_ girl was marrying her one real chance of being rich again. At least in a way that no one would wonder about.  
  
She went back to New York a week later only to find out that the wedding was to be held there, in the hotel she was staying at that weekend. She really should have thought about it when the door clearly said Casablancas Real Estate under the name of the building. Of course her parents hadn't told her that Dick was now part of the business, and doing extremely well at it. If she had known that, well, she wouldn't have left Neptune the second time.   
  
She wasn't going to stop the wedding. It would just make people think. She also wasn't going to go. That too would make people think. She really wanted nothing to do with the wedding at all. Of course, she hadn't really had the best luck since she moved to New York.   
  
She decided to go to another hotel the night before the wedding. She really didn't need to hear the parties going on all night. And if she saw one more plaque announcing the wedding time and couple, she was going to burn the whole place down. With or without her in it. She was halfway to the lobby when the elevator stopped and opened its doors. She thought that it would be a maid so she didn't look up from her cell phone until someone said her name. She recognized that voice and, dammit, she really didn't want to talk to them. When she looked up she was met face to face with Cindy Mackenzie.   
  
She told her that she was on her way to the airport, that she was getting out of New York for a while. She wanted to see her family before she got married herself (it was a horrible horrible habit) and that she was happy for her (again, a horrible horrible habit). She found out pretty much all of the details of the wedding that she could when they both ended up in the same cab. She really had no idea how that had happened, but she ended up not having to pay for the entire ride so she couldn't complain. Cindy, or Mac as she remembered from high school, had talked about the last minute details on the phone the five minutes it took for her to get to her destination. It sounded like a beautiful wedding. At least she was certain that it would be a lot better than her Vegas nuptials five years before.   
  
She was finally able to get out of the cab twenty minutes later when the cab driver pulled up to the airport. She had actually lied about it, but, suddenly, it seemed like a really good idea. It wasn't really like she had the money to get home, but she figured she could beg her dad over the phone to call and purchase a ticket for the next flight out.   
  
Just because she wasn't born a Sinclair didn't mean that she couldn't work the charm. Her dad never picked up his work phone so she went to her next option. The man at the bar was drunk enough to hand over the money instead of her having to fly on a plane with him and rejoin the Mile High Club. Luckily he was waiting for a plane to Georgia and didn't think twice when he handed her two bills too many. She bought him a few drinks with his own money and, before he could stumble to the hotel in the airport, he left her, or maybe it was the bartender, an extremely nice tip.   
  
She made it back to Neptune within the next twenty four hours. The first thing she noticed, of course, was that her parents and sister weren't even home. She didn't think much of it until she stepped into her father's study and found the invitation lying open on the desk. Suddenly she felt like she was being led around by that Christmas ghost from that movie she used to hate when she was younger. Only, instead of seeing how it could have been, she was seeing how it was and, instead of being able to wake up and change it, she was stuck in the reality.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
